Bike routes and pedestrian plazas complicate mobility for the blind

More than 360,000 New Yorkers have a severe visual impairment, and some of them feel threatened by the city's growing number of bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, The New York Times says. Groups like Lighthouse International and the PASS Coalition have responded by requesting an increase in accessible pedestrian signals, which broadcast audible information at intersections, and detectable warning strips, whose bumpy surfaces supply a tactile marker of a sidewalk’s end. Janette Sadik-Khan, the City's transportation commissioner, says her department has installed accessible signals at dozens of intersections; traffic-related pedestrian deaths have fallen steadily over the past decade. But advocates for the visually impaired say greater attention to those with little or no sight is needed.

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